Nokia Looking To Unload Dopplr?
TechCrunch has heard that Nokia is looking to sell off Dopplr, a company they acquired less than a month ago. If this is indeed true, I wouldn't want to be a Nokia shareholder. In essence, Nokia paid for recruiting Marko Ahtisaari, Dopplr CEO (former Nokia) as well as Matt Biddulph, Dopplr CTO. The reason I wouldn't want to be a shareholder is that paying for these kind of recruitment fees isn't the smartest path down the road to gather a winning team of professionals.
We also heard that there isn't a lot of synergies regarding the product roadmaps of Ovi and Dopplr, as they were mainly after the team behind Dopplr. This again raises an interesting point, would you as an entrepreneur sell your company at any cost and whatever the future may look like for your beloved one?
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Well, that was the speculation on Twitter when Nokia purchased Dopplr: they wanted Ahtisaari back and of course, Matt Biddulph is a strong resource.
Even if there were few synergies, Nokia could easily have kept Dopplr running, or they could have been as smart as Yahoo was when it folded Yahoo Images (or whatever it was called, I barely used it) into Flickr,
The more ominous theory, of course, is that Dopplr wasn't all that great financially when it was examined closely. While I love Dopplr I've never been able to figure out how it would be cashflow-positive.
On the other hand, perhaps the new motivation for creating great participatory tools is to get a plush job in a big corporation. You do your stint in 2.0 land, and then you head for headquarters. Nothing wrong with that.
"isn’t the smartest path down the road to gather a winning team"
I agree, look for example why Mr. A had to leave in the first place. 30+ failing projects, no design understanding and less and less support from the people who should work for him. Of course, this is how huge companies work...
MattiH
[...] Nokia Looking To Unload Dopplr? TechCrunch has heard that Nokia is looking to sell off Dopplr, a company they acquired less than a month ago. If this is indeed true, I wouldn’t want to be a Nokia shareholder. In essence, Nokia paid for recruiting Marko Ahtisaari, Dopplr CEO (former Nokia) as well as Matt Biddulph, Dopplr CTO. The reason I wouldn’t want to be a shareholder is that paying for these kind of recruitment fees in the smartest path down the road to gather a winning team of professionals. (tags: nokia rumour dopplr) [...]
I Disagree, both Google and Microsoft does the same thing all the time, using people's ability to build a start up as a sign that those people are worth so much that they should hire the team. Some times people pay millions to acquire a great team. There's real difference between median talent and great talent. And there's real huge costs in other methods of getting the talent and weeding it out.
And this comment has nothing to do with my view of the team acquired. I think they made mistake. But I think acquiring just for the team and scrap the product is standard practice, and it works. And sometimes its bargain compared to alternative methods of getting same result. They just amortise the costs of acquiring the people over five years that they are required to stay to get the money. And sometimes its just double the salary of what they pay normally per person.
@Jouni: Who made a mistake? The team or Nokia?
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